My community

year 1- adjectives observed lesson

TES Primary - Forum

Join hundreds of primary teachers in the TES Primary group. Find lesson ideas and inspiration, share best practice and get your questions answered by your peers. This is also the place for debate on the latest issues in primary teaching.

year 1- adjectives observed lesson

My mentor is coming to observe me on Monday for literacy. I'm doing a lesson on adding adjectives to sentences (in year 1). I'm also doing guided writing with a group in the lesson. He has told me he wants to see 'inspirational' teaching...so now i'm panicking. Anyone got any exciting ways to do adjectives?

What unit/theme/ topic are you looking at in literacy? Can you link the lesson into that?

I've used the thru the keyhole IWB activity to support work on adjectives. Last half term I used the Giant's castle - they looked at the image and listened to castle sound effects to generate word banks - what can you see, hear, feel, taste, smell?, then they had a letter from 'Monsters on the Move' an estate agents for monsters who were trying to sell the Giants castle since Jack had killed the giant who once lived there! They asked the class to help them write interesting sentences to describe the castle that they could use for an advert. They sent several 'boring' sentences eg There is a table, that we improved in the whole class session by adding adjectives, then they went off and wrote their own sentences for the advert using adjectives.

This half term I'm using the mermaids cave one and we will do something similar, but children will write sentences describing what it's like for a postcard.

When I was on placement I observed my mentor doing a lesson about improving sentences through use of adjectives. She wrote a boring sentence on the board ' The giant went through the village'. She then got them up on their feet pretending to be giants around the carpet area. They then came back and described what type of giants they were. because they had acted out being giants they came up with words they would have struggled to think of just sat on the carpet. She scribed on the board their adjectives. The group then picked the one they like best and added it to the sentence. She then got them on their feet again to be giants and to act our how the giant moved, providing them with prompts, did he tip toe? Did he stroll? Once they had got into character they came back and fed back their thoughts on how they moved, and she scribed and so on... until adjectives had been added. She also did the same for the year 2's with adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.
It really inspired them in their writing!

I observed one recently... a story had been read the day before about a boy who finds a fossil in a cave. He closes his eyes and sees all the dinosaurs. The children came up with ways to describe the dinosaurs. All pretty boring. The next day the children were reminded of the story and were shown the words they had come up with the day before. These had been stuck around a picture of a dinosaur and then they went outside with spades and had to dig in a certain area of the garden (where fossils, shells and WOW words had been buried). These were discussed and their meanings. The children had to close their eyes and imagine the dinosaurs. They then were given a postit note and in groups had to come up with a sentence describing the dinosaurs. The top group had an adult with them and had the use of a thesaurus. The middle group just used their imaginations and the lower group were given a box full of dinosaurs. They had to choose one and describe it. When they had their sentence it was stuck around the same picture. The plenery was just to see the difference. Every child had improved their sentence writing with adjectives. The lesson had shown clear progression.

Ooo thanks for your ideas guys.
We're between ideas at the moment. It was planned as a standalone lesson as we've picked up that it's something they need to work on. However we have just been doing mr benn so I might link it to that.
You've really helped!
Inky- I hate that word too...grrrrrr!!